Turntable.fm Goes From Virtual to Real

In just the last six months, the social website Turntable.fm has taken off by replicating the experience of an old-school record-sharing party. Users hang out as avatars in virtual rooms, taking turns playing tracks for other assembled users, who chat and vote on what they’re hearing. Now, Turntable.fm is trying to take that concept back into the physical world.

Starting last night in Chicago, concerts by the rapper Wale are opening with a live Turntable.fm session. Instead of the typical pre-show routine of listening to a DJ or a piped-in playlist, audience members can spin their own songs via a Turntable room displayed on a big screen. Concertgoers at the House of Blues could join in by using a Turntable.fm app on their mobile phones, but the session was also open to remote users. Last night, the collective playlist was diverse, ranging from rising rapper Big Sean to scrappy indie rock duo Matt & Kim.

Turntable.fm says the outing with Wale (pronounced WAH-lay), which spans seven more concerts, marks its first official partnership with a performer for live events. The tour by the native Washington, D.C., rapper is hitting college campuses—a prime target for Turntable.fm, because the fledgling company launched this past summer when school was out of session.

Chairman and co-founder Seth Goldstein says the company is also seeing and supporting a growing number of live Turntable.fm gatherings in places like clubs and bars: “We call it Turntable IRL—In Real Life.” This week, for instance, members of bands such as Passion Pit and the Smiths will be doing live sets during the CMJ Music Marathon in New York City. Online music “isn’t lonely,” Goldstein says. “Music used to be something that people did together. Our goal is to bring that social value back to the experience.”

In Wale, the company has apparently found a good match. An adept and respected rhymer, he has yet to go mainstream, thus bringing credibility to the party. (He first gained wide notice in 2008 with an underground release that riffed on “Seinfeld,” titled “The Mixtape About Nothing.”) And, like so many other young musicians, he’s a diligent social networker. He seems to tweet every other minute to his 1.2 million Twitter followers. Still, Wale downplays his tech credentials. Before Tuesday night’s show in Chicago, he hadn’t personally tried Turntable.fm. “I’m always late to the party when it comes to social networking. I was the last one on Twitter,” he says. Plus, he’s been busy recording (and now promoting) a new album, “Ambition,” which is out Nov. 1. Like so many people who’ve heard the buzz on Turntable.fm but have yet to give it a spin, the rapper faces a challenge: “Free time is something that’s hard to come by.”

[NOTE: An earlier edition of this post listed the wrong date for the release of Wale's new album.]

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